Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

University of Oklahoma

Que peut la littérature? by Simone de Beauvoir; Yves Berger; Jean-Pierre Faye; Jean Ricardou;
Jean-Paul Sartre; Jorge Semprun
Review by: Keith O. Gore
Books Abroad, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Spring, 1966), p. 165
Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40120541 .
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Books in French
** Simone de Beauvoir, Yves Berger, Jean-
Pierre Faye, Jean Ricardou, Jean-Paul
Sartre, Jorge Semprun. Que peut la littera-
ture? Paris. U Herne. 1965. 128 pages.
Que peut la litterature? is the transcript of a
debate organized by Clarte, a French Com-
munist students' review. When this left-wing
inspiration is borne in mind, it seems clear that
the question asked in the title would tend to
orient the participants toward the supposi-
tion that literature can in fact exercise an in-
fluence in the world, and therefore toward the
notion that their task should be one of trying
to discover the means by which literature can
help to bring about some desirable result- for
example, of a political or social kind. Conse-
quently, the debate turns very largely upon the
notion of committed literature, and the dis-
cussion is inhibited by two factors: first, here,
as very often elsewhere, different people have
different views of what committed literature is;
second, they feel obliged to take up absolute
positions which are not always easy to defend.
The most obvious example is that of Jean
Ricardou, who insists that the writer is not
concerned with communicating something so
much as with working a "material"- language.
This is bound up with the notion that art is
the source of man's humanity: "Part, (...)
c'est la qualite differentielle par laquelle un
certain mammifere superieur devient homme"
(p. 59). All would not agree; nevertheless, the
idea is more acceptable than what follows,
since I understand Ricardou to suggest that
animals are slaughtered in abattoirs because
they are "radicalement hors de la litterature"
(p. 60). An opposing point of view is put by
Jorge Semprun, for whom commitment in
literature comes to mean the equivalent for the
intellectual of the workers' militant political
activity; in other words, it would seem that
literature has some political or social use,
despite Semprun's quoting Marx to the effect
that a writer's works are not means, but ends
in themselves (p. 32).
Underneath such differences of opinion lies
the persistent temptation to use the expression
"committed literature"while talking as though
a roman engage, for example, were the same
thing as a roman a these. Those who (probably
rightly) think that a novel, written with a view
to defending a given thesis, runs the risk of
being a bad novel, sometimes therefore suc-
cumb to the opposite temptation: that of in-
This content downloaded from 188.72.127.52 on Fri, 20 Jun 2014 21:14:18 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
sisting that a work of art should be "gratui-
tous." But gratuitous art is probably as difficult
to achieve as the gratuitous act associated with
Gide. And if (to paraphrase Gide on another
issue) the road to bad literature is paved with
good intentions, it is not true that a lack of
good intentions leads necessarily to good art.
In other words, the question of commitment
in literature is not really a matter of artistic
principle: there can be good committed litera-
ture, just as there can be bad "gratuitous" art.
Sartre himself insists that the work of art
need not, and indeed should not, be a discus-
sion of contemporary preoccupations (p. 124);
what matters for him is that it should be of its
time, that it should reveal to other men the
world in which they live. This, presumably, is
an idea that most people could agree with, even
if they have never heard the word "politics"or
the name Marx. Commitment in literature is a
valid subject for discussion provided it is not
seen as an absolute, and provided one does not
feel bound to choose for or against some kind
of "positive" (i.e., militant) commitment.
Keith O. Gore
University of London
^ Pierre de Boisdeffre. Giono, Paris. Galli-
mard. 1965. 285 pages + 15 plates. 12.70 F.
This single volume on Giono is a welcome
addition to the already important and valued
series, La Bibliotheque Ideale. Pierre de Bois-
deffre, who has written such incisive works as
Une histoire vivante de la litteratured'aujourd'-
hui, has compiled in a highly succinct and
readable fashion the most salient material con-
cerning the life and work of Giono.
Understanding that the primary purpose of
the book is that of giving to the reader the
opportunity of gaining an insight into Giono's
thinking, Boisdeffre divides his text into several
logical categories: a brief chronology, a fairly
extended analysis of Giono's production, a
chronological summary of major works, ex-
cerpts from individual books, and finally a
textual and critical bibliography.
At the outset of the book, Boisdeffre con-
fesses that there is no mot-clef which can be
applied to Giono's work as one can be applied
to that of Proust (temps), Gide (disponibilite) ,
or Claudel (catholicisme cosmique). Having
established this fact, Boisdeffre proceeds to
evaluate Giono as a man who "preche la vie
naturelle, la bonte active, les plaisirs simples et